


Merry Christmas from the Crappy Lake Erie Canal Motel

by sendal



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Needs a Hug, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Sandra writes fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:28:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7964344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sendal/pseuds/sendal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's going to see Phil for Christmas even if it kills him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Christmas from the Crappy Lake Erie Canal Motel

“The best part about our jobs is seeing such interesting parts of the world in the middle of the night,” the agent behind Clint says over the drone of jet engines. “I’d take a picture, but it’s all dark down there.”

“Try studying the back of your eyelids,” someone replies crossly. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

Clint has given up on sleep. He's dead tired, yes, but also jittery from adrenaline. Car chases, machine-gun fire, and a last-minute haul up into a moving plane can do that to a person. The sharp headache centered square behind his eyes pretty much rules out any dozing anyway. He's also still damp from hand-to-hand combat under the cold spray of ceiling sprinklers, and the fucking dry air blasting out of vents is making his chest feel full of cement dust. He coughs, but nothing comes up and the movement makes his head hurt worse.

Natasha jostles his side and hands over a water bottle. “Celebrating Christmas anywhere special?”

He drinks the tepid water. It doesn't help much. Around them, turbulence rattles the equipment secured in cargo nets. At least the lights are out, thank god, because Clint can't deal with harsh illumination right now. He wishes they'd turn up the fucking heat.

“Is today Christmas Eve?” he asks, trying to focus on his watch.

“More or less.”

“Yeah, I'm driving up to Phil's mom's. He's already there.”

“You can't drive three hundred miles in your condition."

Maybe, but he doesn't have time to be sick. Phil's been looking forward for weeks now to a big holiday with his mom and sisters, and although Clint isn't one for family events he wants Phil to be happy. They’ve also agreed to wear the engagement rings they’d bought on a recent trip through Amsterdam. Simple rings, silver and gold. They’d slipped them on during an evening boat ride on the canals, the sky darkening as the tall buildings glowed along the banks. But back in the States they’d put them aside, because at SHIELD it was one thing to be madly in love with your co-worker and quite another to be advertising it.

Clint says, “It’s not three hundred miles. It's like two-fifty."

“Dumbass,” she replies.

She slips out of her seat, pads off to the rear of the plane, and returns with some aspirin and a folded blanket that smells faintly like jet fuel. Clint doesn't bother to object to the aspirin. She's more than capable of making him take the pills no matter what he thinks about it. Under the blanket, she rests her head on his shoulder and tucks up her legs.

“Three hours to touch down,” she says. “Get some rest.”

He closes his eyes and forces himself into a half-doze, nothing substantial or restorative, just his body quiet while his brain continues to replay the ambush in a hallway that was supposed to be clear and the face of a dark-haired woman as she died on the wet floor in front of him. Sure, she was HYDRA and would have shot him in just seconds; still, she’d been someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother, and he'd killed her.

Beside him, Natasha sleeps so soundly that he hates her.

They land at a secret military base in northern New Jersey and are whisked off across the dark tarmac for debriefing. The coffee's hot, the questions routine, but Clint's right leg jiggles incessantly under the round conference table. He tries not to notice how the carpet matches the color of dried blood. Afterward Natasha strong-arms him to the all-night infirmary, where an Indian doctor with bloodshot eyes catalogs his bruises and checks his pupils and listens to his lungs.

"You've got some wheezing," the doctor says.

"I do not," Clint says, affronted.

Arms folded at the edge of the exam table, Natasha repeats, "Wheezing."

She makes it sound like a personal failing. Clint scowls at her but she seems unimpressed. At least the doctor doesn't try to admit him, because Clint is prepared to raise a shit storm of objections. Instead he gets a shot and some more aspirin and a warning to take things easy for the next few days. As he pulls his filthy T-shirt back over his head he hears Natasha say something about Stark and the tower, but that's a negative.

"Not now, Nat."

She raises an eyebrow. "Stark's been decorating."

Clint can imagine it: over-the-top tinsel garlands and dazzling lights, exotic liquors and pyramids of fine food. Just like last year. He and Phil had gone to the party separately, each dancing around unspoken sentiments, but Stark's spiked eggnog had them loosening first their black tuxedos, then their shy tongues. Before midnight they found other uses for their tongues and hands, and had stumbled into an elevator with laughter and unexpected gifts.

Good times, great memories, but somewhere in the world is a family that will never see their loved one again, and he'd done that. Part of the job, move along, what the hell? He shouldn't be feeling guilty, but the prospect of holiday carols and candy canes and Tony Stark beaming over the Bacchanalia is enough to make his stomach twist.

"I need some sleep first," he says, reaching for his boots.

If anyone understands the need for decompression and readjustment, it's Nat. With dawn streaking the eastern sky she leads him across a bitterly cold parking lot to temporary quarters. The barracks room is cold and undecorated, just old furniture in a square room with a bunk bed and dresser. Towels, sheets and pillows have been left out on the narrow beds, all of them industry grade and gray from repeated washings.

Nat pushes the towels into his hands. "I'll find more blankets. You find the showers."

The open bay showers are at the end of the concrete-block hallway. No privacy, but Clint's beginning to think the entire building is empty anyway. At least the water pressure is a tribute to military plumbing. He scrubs away grit and sin until his skin turns pink, lets the hot water pour into his eyes and ears and against his skull. With a towel around his waist and goose bumps on his arms he drags himself back to the room, where Natasha has indeed dredged up some large wool blankets.

"I'm going to find some food and a phone," she says as he tumbles into the lower bed. He doesn't think he can make it to the upper one without falling flat on his ass. She adds, "If you're not here when I get back, I'll kill you."

"I gotta call Phil," he mumbles into his pillow. He needs to hear Phil's voice, hear him say it's okay not to come up today, hear him not be disappointed and irritated that Clint isn't going to miss their first official Christmas with his family.

"I'll call him," Natasha says, or maybe she doesn't, because he's sinking too fast to make sense of anything.

When he wakes again the midday sky is gray and blustery, Natasha is asleep with a hand clutching a knife under her pillow, and a feast awaits on the ugly wooden dresser—cold ham sandwiches wrapped in paper, coffee gone cold, a large bag of potato chips, and a box of cupcakes. Clint feels warm and rested and restless, or at least two of the three, and Nat is dead to the world. He hangs her Christmas gift on the bed post, proud that she hasn't yet discovered it in his pockets, and grabs his clothes and boots from the closet. Still dirty, but they'll have to do. The weather outside is ridiculously freezing. Luckily he finds a thick fatigue jacket hanging in a locker at the motor pool, and then he finds the keys he needs, and then he takes advantage of the on-duty soldier's absorption with porn playing loudly on his cell phone to liberate a dark unmarked sedan.

Only after he's on the road does he regret not stealing the soldier's phone to let Phil know he's coming. The phone might have also had a map feature, which would come in handy since he's not exactly sure where he's going--north to Albany, that part he knows, and then east into the suburbs. Or maybe west. It might be west.

He figures that somewhere in the great state of New York there's a gas station that still has a pay phone, and inside by the counter he'll probably find a map or two as well.

Would help if he'd brought some money and identification, but SHIELD agents don't usually on underground bunker raids with VISA cards or spare change.

On the plus side, the gas tank is full and should get him to where he's going, the heater works just fine, and the ham sandwich he'd grabbed on his way out might be tasteless but it quiets some of the noises is stomach is making. All of the music on the radio sucks, but there's some science show on NPR that keeps him from thinking too hard about a hallway with cold water streaming from the ceiling, a woman who thought she could take him and instead wound up dead on the floor, neck cracked, her brown eyes wide at something he couldn't see.

There's only one woman who can consistently defeat him, and he left her sleeping back in the barracks.

She's going to be pissed, he knows. But he'll risk it.

Just over the New York state line there's a state trooper parked at the side of the road and he slows down. Ten miles after that, a helicopter buzzes low against the clouds and passes over. Five miles later, he picks up a motorcycle tail. Telling himself that he's just being paranoid, he forces his hands to loosen their iron grip on the steering wheel. The sky starts spitting out snow but the visibility's not bad, and he's driven in worse.

"Like that time in Moscow," he says, but Nat's not riding shotgun and he's alone driving north and the science guy, Neil someone Tyson, isn't interested in reminiscing.

The heater's on overload, so he turns it down and hopes the sweat under the jacket will go away. When it doesn't, he cracks open the windows. The cold air doesn't do much good for his cough, and it sucks that there's nothing to drink. Should have stolen one of those coffees Nat left out.

Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. He thinks about the Avengers Tower and Tony's Christmas party last year. Bruce had worn a ridiculous reindeer sweater just to make Nat laugh and Thor, no stranger to winter festivities, had given a rousing toast to the joy of family and friends when the season turns cold. Steve Rogers had given everyone homemade cookies. Clint kind of wishes he could be in the tower now, maybe some hot chocolate cupped between his hands, maybe a hot toddy like the kind Phil makes on stormy nights when thunder sounds like artillery and neither of them can sleep.

The bunker they left behind is a tomb now, thanks to the explosives that Clint's team left in their wake. The woman he killed is buried under a thousand tons of cement and rock, all of her crushed back into the tiny atoms of the universe that Neil Someone Tyson is talking about. Any hopes she'd had were gone, any dreams of the future unrealized.

He shouldn't be so fucking emotional over someone who tried to kill him.

He shouldn't be shivering with cold while his bones ache from fire.

The motorcycle rider passes him. Another state trooper appears roadside, a radar gun pointed at the oncoming traffic. A different helicopter sweeps over. Traffic reports on the holiday crush, or maybe someone escaped from a prison. The gas tank is still showing a quarter tank and Albany has been drawing closer on the highway signs, but his bladder's complaining loudly and he really doesn't know how to find Phil.

The radio has gone silent, but he doesn't remember turning it off. The snow is thicker now in the dim light, with only splotches of daylight left.

Clint admits momentary defeat and exits. The nearest gas station is across the street from a craptastic motel and an adult toy store. If he were feeling even just one percent better, he'd maybe go buy a kinky Christmas gift for Phil. Instead he trudges inside the mini-mart in his dirty clothes and military coat. There's no pay phone, and the Russian clerk looks hesitant as he passes Clint the bathroom key. In the mirror over the sink Clint thinks maybe he's got the flu, that might explain the cough and the fever spots and why his hands are shaking.

He can't bring germs to Mama Coulson and her only son, to a family celebration of food and merriment that has no chair waiting for sickness and death.

It takes the last of his focus to bring the car across the road to the motel, where the 1970's green and orange decor in the lobby takes on extra fuzziness in Clint's vision. The lady working the desk has white hair and a nametag that says Delores. She watches him come in with her hand under the counter, maybe readying to push a panic button or lift a pistol. It's not the first time he's had to sweet-talk his way into a hotel room that he can't pay for, but all of his best lines seem beyond the reach of his thickened throat, and it might be easier to just curl up on the ass-ugly sofa by the window and pass out entirely.

"We're full up for the holidays," she says, even before he can launch into any improvised tale.

He's feverish but not delusional. "Parking lot's empty."

"Tour bus due in by six o'clock." Delores's no-nonsense expression doesn't flicker in the slightest. "You could try down the street. Holiday Inn."

There's a map and a sign behind her, something about Lake Erie. The words "Waterfront Views" wrap around her head like a golden halo. The best waterfront view he's ever known came courtesy of the private hotel in St. Thomas where he and Phil stayed for Valentine's Day weekend. They got more use of the bed than the balcony, but he can almost hear the steady whoosh of ocean waves now as they roll in and out, rushing ashore only to abandon their quest and rush out again.

Maybe that whoosh is his own heartbeat. Or his lungs. Definitely wheezing.

The desk phone rings. Delores answers, her gaze and attention already gone from Clint, but her eyes snap up before he can move away from the counter.

"What?" she asks. "Why - yes." Flustered now. "I guess that we could."

Clint's focus goes back to the tourist map. His sense of geography is better with Eastern Europe than upstate New York, but he thinks Lake Erie should be in Ohio. Has he been driving all day in the wrong direction? Natasha will laugh her ass off.

"Erie Canal, not Lake Erie," Delores says, startling Clint. Either she's a mind reader or he's rambling aloud. "We have one room left, but it's a family room. With teddy bear wallpaper. Will that do?"

"Sure," he says, agreeable to anything that gets him off his feet.

She doesn't ask him his name, or make him sign anything, or hand over money he doesn't have. Instead she takes a brass key from a hook and walks him outside to the third room in the long, low building adjacent the office. The teddy bear wall paper looks stained with cigarette smoke and there's mold on the bathroom ceiling, but the two double beds look sturdy enough and beyond them is a large window that looks out onto Lake Erie. Or the Erie canal. Whatever.

"Your friend said he'll be here soon," Delores says, from very far away.

Clint has no inclination to question her. Coat on, boots heavy, he plants himself into the nearest bed. If she's a secret assassin or HYDRA operative or serial killer, he's shit out of luck. In his condition, he can't even defend himself from a mosquito.

The door closes. He hopes he doesn't die in his sleep, alone in the crappy Lake Erie Canal motel.

#

He doesn't die.

Instead he wakes to a tilted view of Natasha and Steve playing checkers at the table in the corner, their voices low against the TV that's playing Christmas cartoons. Clint's clothes are mysteriously missing, and there's a weight wedged behind him that smells like Phil, and on the bedside table are vials of medicine, a quart of orange juice, and a box of tissues. When something shifts against the top of his head, he reaches up and discovers an ice pack gone warm.

"When did you all get here?" he croaks out.

Steve's face is hard to read, because he's backlit by the gray light from the window and because Clint's headache is still making itself known. But his voice is warm.

"You asked the same thing last time you woke up," he says.

Natasha captures one of Steve's checkers and says, magnaminously, "If you still feel like shit, I will save the ass-kicking for later."

Phil's voice is half-buried in a pillow. "There will be no ass-kicking on Christmas Day."

It takes a lot of effort for Clint to roll over. Above him, the shade of the wall lamp is decorated by a teddy bear in blue pajamas wielding a hockey stick. He files that away for future consideration. Beside him, Phil is rumpled and sleepy in his green shirt and blue jeans.

"It's Christmas Day?" Clint asks.

"Day after," Phil says fondly. "You slept a while. But we'll call a re-do when you're better."

"Oh." Clint scratches his head. "How sick am I?"

"Walking pneumonia." Phil captures one of Clint's hands. They are both wearing their silver and gold rings from Amsterdam, which is strange because Clint doesn't remember putting his on. Phil brushes his lips over Clint's knuckles and says, "Luckily you're pretty tough."

"And stupid," Natasha volunteers.

"Let's go for a hike," Steve suggests to her, rising from the table. "I want to try out my new boots."

Natasha looks scornful. "Six miles uphill in snow will barely break in anything." But she follows him to the coat stand to grab her coat and gloves. Before leaving, she bestows one benevolent hand on Clint's forehead to test for fever. Her fingers are cool and soft, her expression only slightly forgiving. Around her neck hangs the arrow necklace he got her for Christmas.

"Ass-kicking later," she promises.

As they go out, snowflakes swirl back through the door frame. Clint shivers in the breeze and burrows under the blankets. Phil tries to pull him close, but Clint says, "Don't want you to get it."

"Worth the risk," Phil says.

"Sorry I ruined your family Christmas."

" _Our_ family Christmas, and you can't help getting sick," Phil says pragmatically. "But it would be nice if next time you steal a phone, too. How's your head?"

It's possible that Phil means physically, but Clint wants to answer thoroughly. He only dimly remembers the last part of the drive up here. Before that there was an ugly barracks, and before that a grueling plane ride; he remembers a dead woman's face staring at him in accusation, and figures he always will.

"Not too bad," Clint answers, but then an awful cough takes him and Phil reaches for a bottle of dark-colored medicine.

"Merry Christmas from the Erie Canal," Phil says, as Clint swallows it down. "Next year, let's do Hawaii."

The End

"

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Almost exactly 11 years ago, a friend and I stayed at at this run-down motel near Albany on a road trip back from Canada. I think the motel was in Little Falls NY, but I can't find it on Google maps now. The teddy bear room we slept in was indeed creepy. Outside, however, was a beautiful view of the Erie Canal, and the morning mist in sunlight was quite lovely. Along the canal was history marker saying "Leatherstocking Travel Tales station G." Anyway, Clint decided to stay there and this story gets him there. Constructive feedback always welcome.


End file.
